From THE NATIONAL SECURITY LEAGUE 
19 WEST 44th STREET, NEW YORK 
E. L. Harvey, Publicity Director 


A Socialist View ot German Victory 


(IVritten by UPTON SINCLAIR for the National Security League.) 


___ Nine years ago the writer made an effort to persuade the Inter- 
national Socialist movement to take some effective measures against 
world war, then clearly foreseen. A manifesto was prepared urging 
that the Socialist movements of the various countries ‘should make 
opposition to war their first interest, and that membership in a 

Socialist organization should come to mean a pledge to refuse to take 
art In war against nations similarly pledge This manife; 


circulated in England, France, Italy, Australia, Canada and the 

United States. In Germany alone, of all modern industrial nations, 
it was found impossible to awaken interest in the document. Leaders 
of the German Social-democracy explained that the Socialists of 
Germany could do nothing to prevent war. Said one of them, gen- 
erally recognized as their intellectual head: “After a war, and espe- 
cially after an unsuccessful war, then will come our chance.” August 
Bebel, for more than a generation the beloved leader of the German 

_ movement, wrote in his memoirs that the German people would never 
attain freedom until the power of its ruling caste had been broken 
by a military defeat. This is a hard saying; especially must it be 
hard for a German to say it now, in war-time. But Karl Liebknecht 
has said it, and the Socialists of the allied countries have the best of 
Socialist authority for supporting this war, so long as it is waged in 
the spirit of the declarations of our President, that we will make 
peace with the people of Germany, but not with their conscienceless 
rulers. . | 


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